HARDGATE
A good place to start learning more about Hardgate is with a walk along the Duntocher, Hardgate and Faifley Heritage Trail. It introduces us to this area with : Hardgate Cross, now a roundabout, has been
an important junction for centuries. The main road, running east/west, linked the two ancient capitals of Dumbarton and Stirling. The north/
south route was used from the 13th century by the monks of Paisley Abbey to collect taxes in the area, the lands of Kilpatrick Parish having
been ceded to the Abbey in 1227 by the Earl of Lennox.
Wikiwand tells us that : Hardgate has probably been settled since neolithic times times with a burial site at Knappers Farm, the Cochno Stone (a cup and ring marked stone), and a burial chamber near near Cochno Loch providing evidence of this....
Dunn's Mills operated a cotton mill in the 19th century. It continued to produce thread and yarn until its destruction during the Clydebank Blitz in 1941. This all shows it as having a parallel history to that of its neighbouring areas of Duntocher and Faifley.
Sam Gibson writing on the Clydebank Local History Society website notes: :
The original village of Hardgate lay astride the old turnpike road from Dumbarton to Stirling or Glasgow and to the east of neighbouring village of Duntocher. Like its adjoining hamlet of Faifley it was usually preceded by the definitive ‘the’. Perhaps the name could have derived from ‘the hard gait’ or road, which passes through a particularly rocky area known as the Hardgate Knowes as the road to the east leaves the village. The village is connected to Clydebank one and a half miles to the south by Kilbowie Road which is now intersected by the A82 or ‘Boulevard’ with a roundabout half a mile from Hardgate Cross. The cross was offset and its original northern arm went through the hamlet of Faifley to the farms and estates on the southern flanks of the Kilpatrick Hills With the expansion of Clydebank after the 2nd World War the ‘cross’ became a roundabout with a new northern arm going to the large Faifley Housing scheme.
For the full article see the link below.
GIBSON, SAM - CLYDEBANK LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY : https://www.clydebankhistory.org/conc/index.php/clydebank-history/neighbourhoods/hardgate/
HERITAGE TRAIL Hardgate and Faifley Heritage Trail. https://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/media/2619071/duntocher.pdf
